Yesterday evening as I was flying from Orlando to Buffalo I saw this amazing sunset that covered the entire western horizon. The colors we so vivid and separated into a horizontal rainbow. Red at the bottom then orange, yellow, green and blue.
I took this picture out the window but it really doesn’t do it justice. So I wonder why were the colors separated like that?
For weeks we’ve been talking about the surface of Earth, like that it’s broken up into pieces called plates. And these plates move around, pushed or pulled by currents in the mantle, whatever a mantle is. Then there’s magma or lava coming out of volcanoes is that the Earth spilling out its guts?
So I wonder. Do you? 
What is the inside of the Earth made of? How hot does it get? I wonder…..
We took a very different route towards learning this time. We started with a simple “I Wonder” question “I wonder what causes ocean circulation?”. No introduction from the teacher, no movies, no textbooks, no experiments, not even the internet, just students discussing their ideas.
Then we combined ideas from all the classes, asked a few questions of each other to clarify thinking and selected what we (students) thought were the top 5 most significant factors causing water to move through the oceans. Here’s the list (6 listed because of variations between classes):
This is a great list! It shows your ability to apply prior knowledge to new situations, think logically, evaluate various options and engage in debate. I am proud of how well you did.
Lastly you had to do some textbook research into these and present your findings to the class. This had mixed results some very good and others not so good. Textbook research doesn’t seem to be a mastered skill yet, but we’ll work on it. If you were perfect at everything what would you need me for?
Now let’s have some more fun — “scientific messing around”. Let’s play with water!
The famous water cycle drawing (click to enlarge)
While some of you are working on your creative version of the water cycle song (dance?), which we’ll post here, we are moving on and looking more closely at the mechanisms of the water cycle.
The basics of the water cycle, those marked in red, should be familiar to most students. But how well do you really know the water cycle? Take a closer look, what’s happening? I wonder…..
Over the next several days we’ll conduct an investigation into what affects the rate of evaporation and perhaps try to answer another student’s question “Is rain clean?” If the water is polluted on the ground does the pollution go with the water when it evaporates? How do we get acid rain?
Are you still wondering about the water cycle? Have you begun your own investigation? Here is a great resource on the Water Cycle.
“I wonder …..” you fill in the rest.
That’s the theme for science this year. Somehow I hope to rekindle the child-like wonder and amazement at the world which surrounds us. Throughout the year I’ll encourage you to wonder — “I wonder why this happens” “I wonder how this works” “I wonder what would happen if”. Then we’ll build the skills to answer those questions.
As I’m writing this and finishing up a re-design of the class website, I wonder what our first week will be like. Currently tropical storm Fay is off the coast of Cuba and computer models predict its path to include Central Florida. Right now classes on Tuesday and Wednesday are questionable. So if there is no school does the learning stop?
Leave me a comment, just click “response” below.
Brainstorm some ideas, narrow your focus, research your topic, and then design your experiment. Be practical; this must be something you can actually conduct in class with simple materials. I have a few items you can use but anything else you’ll need to provide. It must be safe and have measurable results that answer your key question.
